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Cougem writes "John Fremlin has released what he believes to be the worlds fastest webserver for small dynamic content, teepeedee2. It is written entirely in LISP, the world's second oldest high-level programming language. He gave a talk at the Tokyo Linux Users Group last year, with benchmarks, which he says demonstrate that 'functional programming languages can beat C.' Imagine a small alternative to Ruby on rails, supporting the development of any web application, but much faster."

macson_g writes "Students from Wroclaw University of Technology (Poland) once again turned one of their dormitories into huge display. The project is called P.I.W.O. (B.E.E.R.). This time they converted a 10-story building into 4-color, 12x10 display. The business was used to display animations, and to play interactive games as well. On the project page (in Polish, Google translation here) you can watch an almost hour-long video, featuring music videos, a Tetris session, a dancing Michael Jackson, Duke Nukem and Mario."

The Dutch television distribution system is kind of weird. The BBC does not allow any provider but the old fashioned cable companies to distribute BBC1 and 2. As a kind of compensation the alternatives offered by the digital-over-the-air-TV-providers and these fibre providers is to offer BBC world. Yeah right... that doesn't do it for me.

There is a lawsuit going on at the moment that challenges exactly this 'bbc1 and 2 only on cable' deal.

Some cities in the Netherlands already have broadband fibre options for residential connections. Living in one of the pilot areas in Amsterdam, I am currently enjoying 20 Mbit/s (symmetrical!), but could go up to 100 Mbit/s (also symmetrical) if I'm willing to pay more.

Internet service can be combined with telephone and radio/TV. RTV is converted to old fashioned cable signal in your home, which with good cabling (and proper channel separation (which they did take care of)) gives excellent TV image quality, without slow channel switching, digital artefacts, and one-TV-only downsides typical for other digital TV services.

The good thing is (IMHO) they separated the network itself from the service providers, so you can have your choice of who (and what) you pay for. I'm just getting internet, because the TV package is missing BBC1 and 2 due to stupid monopoly of the old fashioned cable companies.

Anonymous Pirate writes "Operators of The Pirate Baystand trial on Monday in Stockholm. The four defendants from the popular file-sharing web site are charged with being accessories to breaking copyright law and may face fines or up to two years in prison if found guilty. The four defendants have run the site since 2004 after it was started in 2003 by the Swedish anti-copyright organization Piratbyrån. The Swedish public service television announced that they are going to send a live audio stream from the trial. It will be broadcast without editing or translation."

pnorth writes "Officials from New Mexico's Los Alamos nuclear weapons laboratory have confessed that 67 of its computers are missing, with no less than 13 of them having disappeared over the past year alone. A memo [PDF] leaked by the Project on Government Oversight watchdog brought the lost nuclear laptops to the public's attention, but the Energy Department's National Nuclear Security Administration dismissed fears the computers contained highly-sensitive or classified information, noting it was more likely to cause 'cybersecurity issues.' Three of the 13 computers which went missing in the past year were stolen from a scientist's home on January 16 and the memo also mentioned a BlackBerry belonging to another staff member had been lost 'in a sensitive foreign country.' The labs faced similar issues back in 2003 when 22 laptops were designated as being 'unlocated.'"

Although your point is valid to a certain extent, I think you're exagarating the 'problem' of charge and voltage being proportional. Modern switched mode power converters can do a good job.

Additionally I could see a solution in which not all capacitors are use at the same time. By activating them in a proper order/way, one could make a more constant source that can then be the input for a SMPS.

Up until now, scientists had been able to search for water deposits using a spectrometer fixed to the orbiting Mars Odyssey spacecraft. However, only readings that are accurate to within several hundred kilometres can be obtained.
By comparing seasonal changes in thermal infrared patterns, detected by the same Odyssey spacecraft, (scientists)[ed] can make readings accurate to within just hundreds of metres."